About Me

I want people to rise up, speak up, and woman up. "Liberty and justice for all"- that's my dream for America in my lifetime.
(Also- I don't capitalize when I blog- not out of contempt for the practice, just my little act of personal liberation.)

I want to shine a spotlight on just a few of the innumerable examples of worldwide violence, senseless discrimination, and systematic abuse of women. I believe increased awareness can lead to action and change.

8.14.2009

friday screams

LOTS to scream about this week. -----forced child marraige (aka rape)Highlights:"World-wide 82 million girls are child brides.""To be sure, childhood marriage is not an easy problem to address. Some of the causes are poverty, parental desire to prevent sexual relations outside of marriage, fear of rape--which would shame the family and either ostracize or lead to the murder of the victim--lack of educational opportunities for girls, and traditional notions of the primary role of women and girls as wives and mothers. It's perpetuated by religions that aim to keep women subordinate and deeply-rooted cultural norms in which men are encouraged to dominate women--If a wife is a child you can guarantee male control."*please note- there seem to be a variety of causes listed in the paragraph above...but it's really all just different ways to say the same thing...that's self-evident, i hope.*"Children like Kidan deserve to have a childhood."*and, i would add, children like Kidan also deserve a FUTURE THEY CHOOSE FOR THEMSELVES.*

-----ending the CULTURE of violence against womenGreat article. Highlights:"The last meaningful federal survey took place in 2000, at the end of the Clinton administration. A Department of Justice survey on the "Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence" found that nearly 25% of surveyed women said they had been raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, partner, or date. That equates to roughly 4.8 million violent attacks against women annually in this country. And many women were the victim of repeat attacks (an average of 6.9 assaults by the same partner).The study also found that "approximately one-fifth of all rapes, one-quarter of all physical assaults, and one-half of all stalkings" experienced by women will not be reported to the police."*Key paragraph:"It's curious how blind we become to our own culture. We can criticize tribal Muslim societies for their abuse of women, yet fail to see how ours sometimes does the same thing. What can we do? We can support organizations like DASH, which provides alternate housing for victims of domestic violence. We can press for public policies that address domestic violence. We can speak out against the culture of violence -- a culture that's strengthened every time a women is treated like an object. "

-----End the world's two deadliest wars (and save women and girls in the process)Highlights:"Together, Sudan and Congo represent two of Africa's largest countries, two of Africa's richest natural resource bases, two of Africa's longest wars, two of the world's deadliest conflicts in the past half century, two of the continent's most predatory governments, and two of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman or a girl. ""Rape is employed by these conflicting groups as a tool of war and social control,..."*who bears the brunt of the conflict, in real life, on the ground, every day? women and girls.*-----domestic violence in japanHighlights:"The latest data from Japan's national police find a 20 percent jump in the number of women reporting domestic violence. But advocates say there is a long way to go in a country that only criminalized family violence in 2001."but " Forty percent of people over age 20 don't know there is a domestic violence prevention law and only 14 percent of people over 40 are familiar with it, according to the Gender Agency Bureau, based in Tokyo."and "A Cabinet Office survey, which was conducted in October-November of last year, found that 33.2 percent of married women have experienced physical and mental abuse from their husbands"*so, ONE THIRD of women report abuse when surveyed, but a large majority of women, especially over 40, don't even know yet that there is anything they can do to escape their abusers.*-----and finally, just a short snippet, a blurb, if you will, to top off alllllll the screaming today:rape victim blamed for being raped at gunpoint in front of her children.